Four minutes tenderness
by son-of-puji
Summary: Rogue gets a strange gift for birthday that causes her dilemma, chances and doubts. ROMY


**Disclamier: **I don't own anything.

**Summary: **Rogue gets a strange gift for birthday that causes her dilemma, chances and doubts.

**Note: **The idea hit me after watching X3 - The last stand.

**Four minutes tenderness**

Sometimes there is a difference between loneliness and loneliness. Sometimes it runs too deep and can't be understood by anyone. Sometimes it's everlasting.

Incurable. Unchangeable. Painful.

A hollow in your life. The lack of something. Maybe, in a way, the lack of _life_.

How strange, Rogue mused sometimes, life seemed to happen and pass off on the human skin. From the first hug around the baby till the last grip on the dying man's hand. Touches run through a man's life from birth till the very end, and skin is cherishing memories like an old, foxed photo album. Her album, however, was almost empty. Or rather, full of nightmares. There were those touches in her memories, touches full of pain and agony for both herself and her victims. And full of sorrow. And distance. Always the life of someone else, stolen emotions, spied out memories; she became an outsider even within her own mind.

There were times when it wasn't so hard to bear but those were rare times. Mostly it was enough to watch a movie, listen to a song, read a book or glance around to be reminded of her state – there was no need to search for it and no chance to hide from it; Scott and Jean for one were always in the near. Sometimes the two were just sitting in the common room, whispering in a corner and holding each other happily. When they thought no one was watching they shared quick, short kisses. Rogue always pretended reading or doing anything else and showing as oblivious as always with all her heart but from the corner of her eyes she was watching them bitterly. She had become a kind of maniac about this, feeling some sweet pain while watching light touches, meetings of hands, fingers stroking cheeks. And she had been thinking of a man with blurred features, nameless, strange and she could replace it anytime by a real man's vision.

In the very beginning it was Scott. Most times, though, it was just the lack of a man and she felt the ache vibrating inside.

It was a form of cruel self-torture for her; it reminded her that she could never feel this in life.

It had nothing to do with her former fondness for Scott. That had been gone long ago.

With time she became calm. She stopped moping around him but not because she realized her lack of chance. She just knew they didn't have anything in common. They were too different, having little things as whims that would have surely driven each other crazy with time. Scott with his reputation, respectability and leader-type personality was another world far away from her solitude. She was other type. Even among fellow X-men and earlier among the Brotherhood boys she was a kind of outsider. Deep inside she knew she'd always be alone in a certain way.

That was the time when the Cajun returned.

He hadn't even spoken to her, hadn't tried to get closer or anything. He had always been around, though. He'd been there when she stepped out of the school, he'd appeared in the park when she wanted to be alone for a little while, and he'd been there when she got to the mood to rush through the mall… or out of the world. He hadn't shadowed her, she was absolutely sure. It was just like he knew somehow where she would be at a certain time.

In the beginning it scared and confused her. She was honest to herself. She never stopped thinking of him and the time they'd spent together when Gambit had kidnapped her. She tried her best to ignore him and his sometimes annoying presence but with not much success.

The same past, the same ways – she'd never forgotten.

After a while she let him into her life with short conversations and long silences. Sometimes it seemed to be a weird therapy for her, sitting in dead quiet and just thinking without the urge to speak silliness. Gambit never was impatient, never wanted more than what the given moment could provide.

Then they just got closer. Neither of them could have told when it happened or how but it wasn't important. And the man who could set anything in fire had just touched her heart in the same way and pushed her feelings towards explosion. And the girl who could cease and absorb any mutant powers could do nothing with this touch of his.

She had realized long ago, though, that his return meant her just another sip of sorrow. The unfulfillable love.

oOOo

Rogue had birthday that day. In the common room her friends organized a party with balloons and confetti all over the place. Her greatest present was, however, Remy who happened to show up in the middle of the party.

Luckily the attention soon turned away from her to the food on the tables and the music filtering from the stereos.

She clenched her fists. Among her fingers, even through her gloves, she could feel the tiny bottle full of turquoise liquid she'd just got from Mr. McCoy as a birthday present. _The bottle_ – she closed her eyes.

"I've been experimenting upon this liquid for a year," Beast had told her before handing it over. "It's up to you when or how you would use it if you would ever. Most probably it won't be an easy decision. What I'm giving you is four hours of normal life. I'm giving you the fluid possibility of _touch._"

She was dazzled. The whole world was reeling around her in a try to collapse on her. Touch… skin… stroke… hug… kiss… hands, fingers. Oh my god, she thought, unsure of her own feelings.

"The liquid neutralizes and expresses your mutation. However, it takes your genes only four hours to recover. And as I experimented the liquid cannot be used again as your cells would produce an antibody that would make the fluid sadly ineffective."

Cautiously, she opened her fingers just to steal a glance at the ordinary phial that already meant so many undistinguishable things for her. Suddenly she felt it heavy as steel and ice-cold. With racing heart, hundreds of possible acts were running in her mind's eyes, obviously impossible to be merged into so little time. Or so much.

"The person fêted should be celebrating the most loudly, chere," there was Gambit's hand on her shoulder. Her gaze fell upon his glove, musing. The possibility… the _imagination_ almost dazed her.

"Yes," she whispered, slipping the phial into her pocket, smiling. "I guess I should steal Kitty's dancing ability again," she winked at a very satisfied Cajun.

Bottle immediately exiled to the depths of her mind.

oOOo

There was a box in a drawer of her desk that she never opened. However, never stopped thinking of it. It was something behind her every act and word and dream. Somehow all the things around her seemed to lead her thoughts there, no matter how hard she was trying to forget it.

No one asked about that serum except for one.

"What will you do in that 4-hour-period?" Kitty asked her one day with a naughty look.

"Y' saucy, always thinking about _that_!?" Rogue grumbled trying to appear amused, but in that moment she could almost hate the younger girl but not as much as she could hate herself.

"That's not true!" Kitty snapped defensively but didn't give up. "So what's your plan?"

"None of yer business…" She crossed her arms over her chest with mock sulkiness and for a long minute she was thinking the whole subject was dropped.

"Are you happy about that?" Kitty asked quietly. Rogue's face fell as she grew confused. Just spill it, tell someone, anyone – she commanded herself; it was so tempting to get rid of this burden, these doubts.

"Ah don't know, Kitty… Ah'm scared."

"From what?"

"Y'know… it's a never-returning opportunity… Ah'm afraid Ah'm gonna use it in the wrong time, wrong place. Ah don't wanna waste it… And possibly it'll be worse after that."

"Worse? Isn't it better living with the memories than yearning for something you can never get?"

She sighed. "Dunno, Kitty. Well, let's assume you would be having now the 'on' stage of your relationship with Lance." Here Rogue ignored Kitty's protest that she'd done with that guy for good. "Tell me, what'd be better… having and then losing Lance for good or longing for him although he'd never, ever be yers?"

Kitty bowed her head sadly, closing her eyes as thinking hard. "You're right, it's a hard question and needs a decision no one can help you to make… Don't worry, Mr. McCoy won't be mad if you decide not to use it."

"Yeah, Ah know… It's just exactly that Ah don't wanna regret mah decision later."

"Besides, maybe he'll be able to make you another serum in the future… who knows, chemistry is a miracle."

"Yeah… maybe." Rogue forced a smile, though inside she felt lonelier than ever before.

God, how easy it was, how riskless, how painless to postpone over and over again even the act of thinking of using it. Sometimes she wished hard the bottle would disappear with all its content.

Too many what-ifs she could list, too many fears. Spending four hours with Gambit, perhaps – would it have been right? Would _he_ have been the right one? What if he would turn out to be unworthy? What if a better one would come with time?

She always avoided Beast's gaze, though he never asked about the serum. It might seem he knew exactly what he had given her. The bottle of dilemma.

Then something happened that made her change her mind. One day the Brotherhood that had long joined the Shield was attacked badly, and no one knew anything about them, whether they were dead or alive. Kitty was sobbing all night long. Next day Lance was found alive but seriously injured. Kitty visited him and made up with him again – this time with steady determination.

That was the time when Rogue understood that doing nothing could be just as wrong decision as making one. There was, after all, one life, no matter how cheesy it sounded. She couldn't, she shouldn't judge her present with the eyes and heart of her future self. Everything that seemed right and desired at the given moment was the only that mattered. There was no mean in brooding over a future regret that may never come. Waiting for the right moment to arrive would easily mean waiting till her dying day or when she would be old and sick and would cry over every slipped opportunity.

oOOo

And one day she just made her decision. It wasn't a special day, the sun wasn't shining less or more than usual and the Institute wasn't less loud at all. She just woke up in the morning and her first thought was the bottle. Not the way or time of using it. No, just the bottle itself, wrapped in cotton in the depth of a wood box. There was no unease, hesitation or aversion in her. It was a mere play with thoughts and what-would-bes. And she knew the time had finally come.

And surprisingly, there was no need for her to spend endless time with figuring out how to while away that four hours the serum would provide her as _normal_ life. It was all about Gambit.

She stopped only for a moment to list pros and cons of her plan. Gambit never pushed her in this case, though he knew very well what power the liquid possessed. If she didn't know Gambit was honest, she might have had doubts in his never-admitted but suspected fondness for her, and would have thought he didn't really want her. Remy LeBeau, who could have had any woman living on Earth, appeared to be faithful to a girl who could never be touched.

And if he wasn't, Rogue wouldn't care. In that very moment it seemed to be right choosing him, choosing the schedule she'd figured out for that day. Everything appeared so simple that she was wondering why she'd had doubts and fears.

She snuck into Remy's flat while he was away and by the time she heard his steps outside the door, everything was done, candles lit, dinner cooked and served, music on, dress on. Yes, it might have been a little sappy but not that much she would have found unbearable or uncharacteristic for her. It simply made the atmosphere smooth.

Exactly until Remy practically burst into the flat with half-burning cards in hands, rolling across the hall and scouting around for intruders.

"Should Ah play the Indian chief or that was enough for today?" she smiled.

Remy gaped. First at her presence, secondly at her appearance. "You here, chere," he remarked, standing up and looking around. "I don't have a birthday. Do you?"

"No, just a little this-and-that," she shrugged. "Any complains?"

There was no more question asked.

"Wine?" she offered once they finished the dinner and the candles already printed darker shadows on the walls as the sun outside disappeared behind the roofs.

"Oui, chere, merci," Remy smiled, watching her bare back as Rogue turned away from him to pour wine into two glasses. He didn't see that there was something else apart from the wine ending up in her glass.

"Cheers," she whispered, taking a long sip.

She closed her eyes. All she could taste was the sourness of wine. Her body, however, was burning. Fire and ice were simultaneously running through her veins, making her shiver and giddy. It worked. She knew it. It was just as obvious as frightening that was when her powers had manifested. And this new-old feeling of being able to touch made her somehow empty. She sighed.

"If you can't take alcohol why drinking?" there was smile in his voice. He was amused.

Rogue opened her eyes and put the glass down on the table. She had to move, she had to cease, to destroy this emptiness, this yearning inside her. She stepped closer to him and held out a hand. A bare, naked hand without gloves. Remy winced, and for a moment it seemed he wanted to reel back.

"What…?" he asked but all words stuck inside him. He didn't even budge as Rogue's slim fingers approached his face, only his unusual eyes widened, fixing on her face. Rogue let a melting feeling of a bond between them overrun her at the sight of his persistence and confidence in her. And only a tick before Rogue touched him, Remy seemed to realize what was going on.

"You…" he moaned, again unfinished, and there was a whole new world hidden in his voice, possibilities, longing, heavy nights, fears and doubts, defeated and lied emotions and so many things, all running through his eyes, crossing and touching his face that reflected them truly.

He laid his head into her palm and just couldn't believe it. He needed only a second or two to sober up. Touching Rogue, brushing Rogue, hugging Rogue... And kissing.

She laughed as he eagerly pulled her closer, placing his hands on her back. It was a laugh he'd never heard before. A sigh. A glance. A movement. All never known, never seen and met. A whole new Rogue, blossoming and glimmering meekly. She was so irresistible.

The next moment his lips were on hers, and there was no pain, no powers drifting out of his body, only the incredibility of the moment that a sip of colored water could present them. He was hugging her with the hunger of those who had been starving for long time. Their lips met, crushed and crashed, bit and stroked, sighed and smiled; they were having a silent conversation just as clear as words would have been.

And Rogue felt dizzy. She welcomed this new kind of electricity that shot through her body and had nothing in common with the old electricity of pain. Those memories of her and Cody and their first and last kiss that day had long been bound to the surface of her mind and like a horrible scarecrow haunted her ever since, a dark wraith of her powers. Now it was unbound and flew away like a balloon, leaving her alone to fill its place with a new experience that wasn't supposed to lead up to tragedy.

She plastered her palms over his face, feeling his stubble brushing against her skin, fingertips on his temples, and smiled against his mouth as his need and heat overran both of them. He held her tight and it was so painful that he couldn't merge their body into one.

It had to take a minute for them to realize that someone was at the door, banging on the wood impatiently.

"Merde," Gambit cracked. Rogue couldn't get her eyes off his red tinted lips but the knocking on the door occurred again. "If dat's the devil itself I won't open the door."

"Gambit, are you zhere?" was the shout from outside.

Rogue gaped at Remy. "In a way it _is_ the devil," she smiled slightly upon recognizing her brother's voice. "We hafta open it."

Remy moaned, holding her back. "No, we have no more time only dis, I won't waste it for teen wailings."

Rogue gave him a dark look. "It must be urgent if Kurt's here."

"Saving the world can wait."

"He knows very well that ya're at home. Don't forget he can teleport in if we don't open the door."

"It'd be ill-mannered."

Rogue rolled her eyes, slightly amused. It wasn't a fair comment from a man who had once kidnapped her without a question asked. She stepped towards the door.

"Please, don't," Remy whispered, hugging her from behind and leaning over her shoulder to place a kiss on her neck, nuzzling up to her skin. Rogue closed her eyes, wishing hard that finally Kurt would get bored of pounding at the door in vain. He didn't.

"Remy," she sighed, her heart heavy. Gambit cursed under his breathe, luckily only in French, as he paced to the door and cracked it open.

"Endlich," was Kurt's huff. "You have to come vizh me. It's about the Thieves Guild, zat means danger--"

"I don't care a damn," Gambit snapped, planning to shut the door when he sensed Rogue stepping closer to him, her hands sneaking on his back near to his hips. Her touch there, around that area drove him crazy and he wanted nothing more than spinning around and kissing her.

"Rogue, you here!" Kurt yelped happily, ready to spill on her all the information Gambit had refused to listen through. Little did he know that his sister was far from being such content. She couldn't even pay attention to the new face of threat they should have to fight. "You know the Thieves Guild the best, zat's vhy ve need you to come."

Gambit shook his head, trying to look arrogant with all his might. "Dat can wait a few hours. I'll deal with it in the morning."

"No, zat can't--" Kurt had the door shut in his face, and for a moment he could only stare at the wood an inch far from his nose. "Wunderbar."

In the meantime, inside, Gambit was standing with his back against the door, hands folded over his chest. He was watching Rogue silently. He knew it wasn't over. Or in a way, from another point of view it _was._

"Y'know ya have to go," she whispered. Gambit leapt to her, ready to talk her out of this nonsense and convince her of the needless of rushing through the country to save the world again but he knew Xavier's damn ideals were rooted too deeply. He pulled her close; if words couldn't play their role, touches might have been able. They failed him, either.

Rogue hid in his arms, her forehead on his chest. She had known it. Always known that it would come to this once. It wasn't Kurt who had knocked on the door – it was fate. How sad it was that her earlier fears appeared to be right.

Fate was playful, capricious and cruel. And out for her. Fate used her as a doll in a ruthless play, kept her on the end of strings, and it was making her dance and bow and fail… always fail - her, the tattered puppet of Wrong Decisions. Why did it always come so easily to lose something before even getting in touch with it?

She remembered an insect she had heard about in Biology class that was given only one day for a whole life to live - how could it be that she'd gotten only four hours and even that was cut short? How could it happen that it seemed to be better being an insect than a Rogue?

"Wait up, Ah'm coming with ya," she said quietly. Not so surprisingly, Remy was stunned.

"What? You can't even use your powers."

"D'ya think Ah could sit and wait here for yer return or washing the dishes?"

oOOo

The whole flight in the X-Jet passed in silence and daze for her. What happened from the minute on when they had boarded the plane was a mere mess for her. Like small, sharp pieces of a shattered glass. Details. Feelings. Fog. Nothing that could have been called whole. Later she couldn't recall and fit together a decent memory from those strange, faraway, meaningless pieces. They remained short cut scenes of an unrepeatable day.

She remembered how warily, so that no one would see it, she slipped out of her gloves and brushed her hand to Remy's.

She'd informed only Xavier about the momentary lack of her powers, since she didn't want to be counted in the professor's plans.

She stayed in the X-Jet as Remy and her teammates with questions in their eyes filed out, unwilling to join the professor in the fore-part of the plane. Luckily, he didn't show any intentions about forcing or asking her.

Kurt was the first unconscious. Jean placed him down on the cold floor on the board before leaving in hurry. He was heavier than Rogue had suspected as she pulled him to a warmer place. They were alone and in safe. No one was watching, nor even Kurt himself. She pulled down her gloves and took his hand. She hadn't experienced before how soft his fur was. She stroked his hair out of his eyes and somehow, deep inside she felt a strange, faint, crying happiness.

And she was just sitting there with her brother's head in her lap and three-fingered hand in hers, counting shouts, bangs and explosions filtering in from outside as her short insect-life was going by with every crack and noise, and inside she was slowly bleeding to the death-life she'd had before.

Where she was sitting it was a good look-out point to the scene where Gambit was walking into a trap. Without hesitation or second thoughts, she followed him. Not much later she found him in a hall, surrounded by a bunch of men, and with his back to her there was Jean-Luc she met in New Orleans on an old day back in time.

_There is no victory without a little risk_, was what she'd always heard from Wolverine. She stepped out of the shadows and caught a grip around Jean-Luc's shoulders, her bare fingers an inch away from his skin.

"Remember me? The girl who kills with a simple touch of fingers," she hissed.

Remy glanced at her, his eyes concerned, his body of an untamed animal's, ready to jump and kill. But there was no need for that, Jean-Luc had a brilliant memory.

"Let Remy go or else..." Rogue never had to finish her threat.

"You shouldn't have come after me. I could have coped with it," Gambit said, pulling her close as they were getting back to the plane. In the Remy LeBeau Dictionary it meant _thanks for saving my ass._

oOOo

And then, it was suddenly over, they were back in Remy's flat. The remains of the dinner on the table had already gone cold, the music disc had run down with clicks-and-clacks in the CD-player. Everything seemed to be untouched, unchanged, only the clock on the wall showed a different sight than it had when they had parted. The candles they'd left lit burnt out with a last blaze just as her ephemeral elixir-life was flickering out slowly.

There was her dress on the floor that she'd left fallen down in her haste, there were her shoes, and her perfume was still floating around in the air - telltale signs of her ridiculous attempt to feel better, feel beautiful and make the evening perfect and unforgettable. She had been so childish, so pathetic. Nothing had depended on it. Nothing had depended on make-ups and hair-styles. Nothing at all.

Tick-tack, five minutes to lifeless life.

Everything should have happened so otherwise.

She couldn't help but letting her tears escape. At least their burden she didn't have to bear any longer.

Somewhere outside, a door was shut loudly. A car was braking with shrieking tires in front of the house. Hopes and chances dying unfold, unborn and among mediocrity. She'd been standing and waiting for a train which had no station at that very spot. As always, life was dashing past her, laughing and waving to her with cheerful hats and handkerchiefs. And she was only watching it going by.

In the hall, like a caged animal, Remy was fuming. All along he'd been cursing everyone dead and alive. His past had haunting him, poisoning his present, and now it had been waltzing a danse macabre with X-genes, time and responsibility; three damn ghouls of their relationship; a cursed quadrille to the beats of losses, fallen dreams and taunted desire.

He didn't want a short fling, a kiss or adventure with Rogue. He could have gotten it in any woman's arms, anytime. It would have been something to keep them going on, a memory printed into skin and cells. There had been a space inside for long that was waiting for an experiment like this to be filled in with. How ironic, it was actually _him_ who botched up this - he and his little loving family.

Remy tore his gloves off like a mad and let his coat slip down to the floor. Then he looked at Rogue and winced. She was indescribably beautiful, standing in the middle of the room, lonely, tears sparkling in her eyes and leaving traces on her pale face, just as she herself had left a trace in his life and heart for good. He stepped closer, amazed, bewitched. Rogue looked at him with so much sorrow on her face that was almost impossible to bear. A lost world lay in her features with all its promised happiness and pleasure. He pulled her close, it was half support-half desire in this movement. Four minutes were left for them, so little for making up for a lifetime, too much for a simple hug. He took her face in his hands and leaned down to kiss her tears away. Rogue snuggled closer to his chest as he moved his hands down to her velvet neck.

They were kissing and holding each other so desperately like there was no tomorrow. And there wasn't. Not for them, not this way.

They lost themselves in a sweet-salty kiss, feeling pain, sorrow, relief and passion in the same time mixed with tears and sighs, thirst for air and more bare skin to stroke. He placed light yet passionate kisses on her face, down to her neck and shoulders, exploring her skin, his fingers slipped under her blouse stroking her back caressingly. Rogue just leaned back her head, her palms on his neck and half-naked shoulders, and tried to memorize every single touch, sigh, kiss and almost insensible line on his skin.

Suddenly he felt a sharp pain flashing through his body, and instinctively drew away from her, but with a sudden guilt, half-heartedly. They broke apart so harshly that it almost hurt. Rogue remained there in the middle of the room, in dim, dancing candlelight, frozen and desperate, watching her own hands with sorrow and hatred. Her powers were filling her body yet again slowly, painfully like thousand pinpricks from toes to fingertips.

She was so lonely, so distant that Remy had to reach out for her to pull her back from a world that threatened with swallowing her. It didn't feel enough to stroke her hair. He bent down, picked his coat up and wrapped it around her shoulder, pulling her close to him, rocking her back and forth with tenderness. Inconsolably, Rogue was crying like a child. She had just lost what she'd never really had. She was rejected right in the gates of Paradise just after a short glance behind the fences.

Four minutes were given to them. A whole life compressed into four short minutes.

The little strange insect which was created to live a short life was definitively trampled down.

**The end**

oooo

Thanx guys for reading. It was a hell to write and I'm still not too satisfied:S But at least I decided to stop mauling it all around:D


End file.
